Dornan Gives Bush Some Advice on AIDS

Rep. Robert K. Dornan offered advice to President-elect George Bush on Tuesday for dealing with the AIDS epidemic: launch a just-say-no campaign involving sex and make experimental drugs available to people with the disease.

“There’s no such thing as safe sex, there’s safer sex,” Dornan, a Garden Grove Republican, told a news conference.

Dornan said a special review board should be set up to approve the use of experimental drugs by terminally ill patients who request them.

In a letter to Bush, Dornan also suggested that federal money intended to finance treatment of AIDS patients should be funneled through a single federal program.

“Such a program would replace the existing programs that are overburdened, inadequate and inappropriate to the specific health care needs of AIDS patients,” Dornan wrote.

“I also believe that AIDS can only be brought under control through a fundamental shift in our values pertaining to sexual relations,” Dornan continued. “That is why I would encourage you . . . and your eventual surgeon general to adopt a ‘just-say-no’ approach to dealing with the question of what constitutes safe sex.”

Dornan said he was not making a moral statement about homosexual behavior but was concerned about stopping the spread of the disease, which renders the body incapable of resisting other diseases and infections.

He said it was “fine” if homosexuals wanted to practice safe sex by using “erotic telephone conversations.”